I'm Alan Alda and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. We were always looking for what else does theater do.

We took on more and more impossible projects in order to keep testing this notion of does it have

meaning does it have relevance how can it be used how can somebody who's not interested

in acting at all still benefit by not only

only watching theater, but by doing theater.

That's Terry Greece.

He's the co-founder and executive director

of the Irondale Ensemble Project.

It's a theater company rooted in improvisation and committed to the idea that theater can be a force for change as well as entertainment.

In 2015, after the death of Eric Garner at the hands of New York City police officers,

Irondale created a program to help the police and the community build trust in mutual understanding.

This is so great to be talking with you Terry because what you do I find so personally inspiring.

Well, thank you.

And you've been doing it for 40 years.

It's harder to learn lines these days,

but we're still going strong.

It's an interesting concept because it's a theater company and most theater companies are founded

to do theater and you have an extension to that sentence to do theater to do theater that really

transforms people's lives we started with uh just a small band of us three three of us really, and we were doing workshops in schools and we were also, of course, interested in doing the great plays of the world.

And then as we picked up more people in order to survive, we had to teach the workshops in the schools because there was no money for theater, but there was money for education.

But what we learned in the schools proved to be a tremendous value to us as actors.

We learned how to hold an audience.

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